Report: Toyota, Tesla Continue Partnership After Battery Deal

Toyota and Tesla will end their battery-supply agreement for the RAV4 EV this year, but that doesn’t mean both companies will stop working together, said a Toyota executive. Although no specific details were announced, a Toyota official said he hopes the company will still share technologies with Tesla, even if the latter will no longer build lithium-ion packs for the RAV4 EV.

Speaking with Automotive News, Toyota’s North American engineering chief Osamu Nagata said, “Tesla has quite a clear business strategy for developing a better battery. [Automakers] as well as suppliers need to work on developing better batteries.”
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In 2012, Tesla agreed to supply Toyota with 2,600 batteries for the RAV4 EV over a three year period. At the beginning of the agreement, the companies suggested that the agreement could be the start of a bigger collaboration in the future. Sales of the RAV4 EV have been slow since the model’s introduction, with only 1,594 models sold through April of this year.
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